The following health and fitness tips were all learned during the two years I spent working as a personal trainer. They're meant to help you keep your summer fitness goals on track without depriving you from your favorite foods and turning the entire season into one giant trip to the gym.

As the temperatures rise this season, aim to let cooler heads prevail by focusing on true summer fitness, physical and mental. You can use this summer to work on the "core" you by starting to ask yourself now, "What will help me strengthen my core self?"

Set your summer goals. Are you looking to run a fall marathon, take a backpacking trip or simply feel good baring more skin? When you have a set goal that you are working toward, your workouts become more meaningful.

Here's a quick and simple three-step guide to claiming your summer body -- and your summer vacation happiness -- for those of us who did not win the genetic lottery and were born with fantastic physiques. To go shirtless this summer, you need to: eat, move, and sleep.

The perfect workout involves more than just heading to the gym, picking up some dumbbells or hopping on a cardio machine, and working up a sweat. If you incorporate these six steps into your workout, your body will respond by becoming fitter faster, with less discomfort for you!

We have one last workout to fine tune the machine that is your body. By now you are looking and feeling amazing and you are ready to take it to the next and final work out. Complete the exercises for one minute each, three times, with little to no rest.

Now that you're coming to the end of your 30-day shape-up, it's time to start looking at how to maintain your results once that challenge is over -- and the easiest way to do that is by building simple habits that will help you stay both strong and slim.

Even if you don't plan on doing a triathlon or marathon in hot weather, high temperatures can make your workouts uncomfortable, inhibit performance, cause dehydration, and leave you feeling under the weather. Why does hot weather throw such a wrench into our workouts?

So you got through our first workout and you are ready to kick it up a notch. This week we get a little more intense with a lot more results. If you find yourself getting tired or sloppy in a set, revert back to week oneʼs exercise.

With summer rolling in, your sleeves are going to be rolling up. This means bare arms, more neck, and possibly even a little waist is going to show. So today, you'll get five steps to ensure that you look good in your t-shirt this summer!

When summer rolls around, I make it a point to use the outdoors as much as possible for fitness because it gives us the chance to move our bodies freely in wide open areas instead of being cooped up in crowded gyms.